ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 122

ICUL CTION
C o n t e m p o r a r y

A r t

Mark Franz

R e v i e w

Special Issue

perfect place to create this commentary.
Rom Hacking is the name for modifying an
image from a Rom (read only memory)
chip, and several artists and designers
have used this technique to create work
that relies predominately on nostalgic
qualities. Most notably perhaps, was Cory
Arcangel’s Super Mario Clouds in which he
removed everything from the original
Super Mario game except for the clouds. In
the case of Zelda Deforested, I edited
every tile of the landscape to remove the
forests and edited the narrative of the
game through the text that is revealed
when meeting characters in the caves and
underworld. I also edited the hexadecimal
code for the game to change the audio, as
this was an important part of creating a
dystopian feel for the game, and gave me
a chance to use some previous training in
experimental sound.
When questioning whether an art piece
using technology can elicit a response
that is anti-technology, Zelda Deforested
accomplishes the difficult task of creating
a work that stands as a record of
existence and that captures nonsharpness, going beyond the elusive
relationship between experience and
identity in our globalized mundanity. So
we would take this occasion to ask you if
in your opinion personal experience is an
absolutely indispensable part of a creative
process... Do you think that a creative
process could be disconnected from direct
experience?

When we speak about John Cage in class, I
sometimes ask my students if they think
that an artist can be fully removed from
their work. The answer almost
unanimously comes back as no, for the
reason that bias is unavoidable. However,
bias is itself a social construction, and I am
fascinated by the idea that work can be
created through someone, without being

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